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offensive comments

I had a completely different post in mind for today, but this piece about Rosie O’Donnell and Chelsea Handler popped up this morning and I changed my mind.

In this article, it states that O’Donnell and Handler have offended little people. O’Donnell said this:

“I’m a little ashamed about it [but] I have a mild fear or anxiety around little people,” O’Donnell confessed before asking Handler point blank: “Would you ever do a little person?”

Okay. I’m sorry. But I had a WTF moment after reading that the first time. Who says things like this? And on national television? Just imagine switching the subject from little people to any other minority and see how awful it sounds.

Handler went on to say this:

“I love little people,” she said. “I want to tackle them. I see them and I want to hold myself down. I bite Chuy [Bravo] sometimes. … He’s so cute and that’s my ultimate body. If you’re going to have a little person, I want that shape, the corpulence.”

If you watch the clip, you’ll see it was a really bad interview. I actually felt sorry for Handler this time. Again, take this subject and switch it to any other minority and see what you get.

Spokeswoman Leah Smith says both viewpoints are equally offensive, but in different ways, so the group has taken the steps of sending separate open letters to Handler and O’Donnell to make their concerns known.

“We decided to separate the two because they are both equally offensive, but separate,” Smith told HuffPost Weird News. “Handler used a lot of ‘pity rhetoric’ when discussing Chuy, saying he couldn’t get a job if not for her.

“For the record, we’re not in need of ‘getting saved.’ We are capable of being successful in any job.”

Leah Smith also states that their organization, Little People of America, isn’t going to make a huge thing out of this. They aren’t going to ask for a boycott of the entertainers. They sent the letters and they are more than willing to sit down and discuss that matter with O’Donnell and Handler.

What I find interesting is that it seems the only way for O’Donnell to get attention these days is to do or say something that sparks controversy. Given her stand on LGTB issues, I would like to believe O’Donnell would know better when it comes to insulting any minority group. So I’m not quite certain why she would even bring up something like this. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Ryan Field is the author of over 100 published works of LGBT fiction, the best selling Virgin Billionaire series, a pg rated hetero romance that was featured on The Home Shopping Network titled, "Loving Daylight," and a few more works of full length fiction with a pen name. He's worked in publishing for twenty years as a writer, editor, and associate editor. His work has been in Lambda Award winning anthologies and he's self-published a few novels with Ryan Field Press. You can reach him by leaving a comment here, or at rfieldj@aol.com